CHICAGO EMERGES AS COMPUTER GAME CENTER;STAGE, MUSIC TALENT FUEL CD-ROM DEVELOPMENT

Chicago is blossoming as a computer game development center, rivaled only by Los Angeles, as local software firms tap the area's theater and music talent.

Companies such as Chicago's Imagination Pilots Entertainment, Evanston-based DC True Ltd. and Buffalo Grove-based Viacom New Media,a unit of New York's Viacom Inc., are turning to local actors, set designers and musicians to fashion increasingly realistic and complex games.

These CD-ROM gamemakers are offering new opportunities for creative professionals while raising Chicago's profile in computer entertainment.

While CD-ROM games featuring such Hollywood stars as Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper have attracted national attention, Chicago-area game developers are creating their own brand of CD-ROM entertainment.

"Companies are using actors and talent in Chicago because of their-for the lack of a better word-'Chicago-ness,'" says Erica Arvold, an agent at Jane Alderman Casting in Chicago. "They look like real people-they're not glamorous. You can create an animated character based on their features, or you can use their distinctive voices for villains or heroes."

While the Los Angeles area is the capital of "Silicon Hollywood," a term referring to the fusion of computer and motion picture industry talent, Chicago boasts an emerging "Silicon Theater District."

The booming CD-ROM game business is bigger than motion pictures, according to Ted Chapman, hardware editor for Lombard-based Computer Game Review. The games generated $6 billion in sales last year-$1 billion more than the movie industry's box-office sales.

There's no shortage of talent for local gamemakers. The recent decline in the number of feature films being produced in Chicago has left a pool of creative artists looking for work.

And Robin Antonick, president of DC True, notes that theatrical professionals are "very good at designing sets that interact with the audience."

DC True hired award-winning local set designers and actors to make "CyberJudas," a game in which the player is a U.S. president who's betrayed by a cabinet member.

"It is a different paradigm than film," Mr. Antonick adds. "(Live performance) skills are necessary to engage the audience, to make (the audience) part of the production, which is the goal of the game producers."

Viacom New Media used local talent to make "Are You Afraid of the Dark?," a game in which players try to escape from a haunted theater. And Imagination Pilots used area musicians in its new release, "Panic in the Park."

"The medium has tremendous possibilities," says Chicago composer Paul Libman, who created musical interludes for "Panic."

"If it works out," he adds, "they will be making a lot of game pictures here."

But the trend presents a dilemma for the Screen Actors Guild, which is grappling with the issue of residual payments for computer game performers. Actors who have already earned their union cards often demand salaries higher than gamemakers are willing to pay.

"The scripts are often as big as a phone book, because they have to shoot so many variations on a scene," says Ms. Arvold. "It's a lot of work, but people don't know what to charge for it."

Local CD-ROM producers typically create three to four titles a year, often emblazoned with the names of a Hollywood distribution partner or parent company.

Imagination Pilots developed a game based on the Tommy Lee Jones thriller "Blown Away." The CD-ROM was advertised on rental videos.

Viacom New Media's "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" is tied to a children's cable television series of the same name, and the game bears the Nickelodeon brand name. The TV show is produced by Viacom, parent of both Nickelodeon and New Media.

According to Raymond Benson, a New Media producer, the game's creators wanted to use a graphic approach to advance a novel-like story line-a hybrid dubbed a "grovel."

In the TV series, children tell scary stories around a campfire.

"The idea was, the kids would start the story, and the CD-ROM player would direct the game toward its ultimate solution," Mr. Benson says.

Starting in November 1993, the game's creators brainstormed with free-lance writers and theatrical talent to fashion a 380-page interactive screenplay. The script maps out a game on seven floors of an abandoned vaudeville theater in Chicago. "It blended several visual styles-video, 3-D rendering, illustration and animation," says Mr. Benson.

Concludes casting agent Ms. Arvold: "You can't survive as an actor here today with just CD-ROM game work. But a lot of people are looking into it."

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